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In August 2013, I delivered the summer convocation address for BYU\u2019s College of Humanities. \u00a0Rereading it after nearly five years, I conclude that it may actually not be the worst graduation speech of all time. \u00a0Here is what I said:<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s a privilege to speak to you this morning\u2014even wearing what Hugh Nibley, during a prayer at BYU\u2019s 1960 graduation ceremonies, famously called \u201cthe black robes of a false priesthood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Graduates, I congratulate you on your achievement.\u00a0 Far more of us are going to college today than in earlier generations, but, even so, it was only in March of 2011 that, for the first time, the percentage of Americans over twenty-five with bachelors degrees exceeded thirty percent.\u00a0 Congratulations, too, to supportive parents and families.\u00a0 Most of our students wouldn\u2019t succeed without your help.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For years, I puzzled over a particular behavior that I noticed in undergraduate students:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Once in a while, I\u2019ve been obliged to cancel a class.\u00a0 Sometimes I could reschedule it, or find a substitute.\u00a0 But sometimes I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 And, when I couldn\u2019t, they were visibly delighted.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, I thought to myself, you guys have paid<\/em> for this!\u00a0 Consider an analogy:\u00a0 You\u2019ve just handed six bucks over for a mega-double cheese and bacon burger supreme.\u00a0 The fast food worker behind the counter deposits your money in the cash register and then coolly informs you that he\u2019s out of burgers.\u00a0 Would you be happy?\u00a0 Yet, here, you\u2019ve paid to enroll in classes, and, though you get no refund, you\u2019re pleased if they\u2019re cancelled.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The mystery was solved for me, though, when I finally recognized that what many students saw themselves as paying for was an eventual degree, a credential\u2014and that the payment took two forms: tuition, yes, but also the time and effort of taking classes.\u00a0 Thus, when a class was cancelled, they\u2019d just received a price discount!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The bad news today, though, is that there\u2019s still one last droning professorial lecture between you and your diploma.\u00a0 Mine.\u00a0 (You should know that my favorite definition of the word professor<\/em> is \u201cSomeone who talks in other people\u2019s sleep.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We on the faculty seldom go into academia for the lavish salaries and the glamorous lifestyle.\u00a0 Most of us are passionate about our subjects, and we (usually) enjoy teaching.\u00a0 So I\u2019m delighted to have one last crack at you\u2014and you, if you want your diplomas, have to just sit there and endure it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I won\u2019t take long.\u00a0 And I frankly admit that choosing a focus for brief remarks is much harder than writing a nice, long, rambling high council talk.\u00a0 But, as I\u2019ve thought and, yes, prayed about what I should say here, one theme has impressed itself powerfully (and surprisingly) upon my mind.\u00a0 If you listen, you\u2019ll soon be able to detect what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Look around you.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s very likely that you know several of the people you can see.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been in classes with them.\u00a0 You may have served in Church callings with them, perhaps even in the same mission.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some of them are good friends.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been so vivid a part of your years here that you can\u2019t imagine these friendships ever ending.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yet, in most cases, even these relationships will fade away.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n You doubt it.\u00a0 You may be inwardly protesting right now that yours will be different.\u00a0 But they will.\u00a0 You\u2019ll move apart geographically.\u00a0 You\u2019ll take jobs in different communities, different firms, different states, perhaps different countries.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be busy with career demands, children, callings.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Except for those rare cases where chance intervenes to save them\u2014perhaps you and your best friend will end up living in the same small New England ward; perhaps you\u2019ll both be drafted by the same NBA franchise\u2014your undergraduate friendships will weaken and die unless you\u2019re determined to keep them alive<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Contacts with your old college friends will become rarer and rarer, and then, one day, you\u2019ll realize with a start that you haven\u2019t heard from Lauren or Jake for years.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll experience a passing twinge of wistful regret, but then you\u2019ll get back to more pressing things.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is natural.\u00a0 Life moves on.\u00a0 You\u2019ll make new friends, who will enrich your world.\u00a0 But most of the old friends will fade into memories, and, if you\u2019re lucky, into old, seldom-looked-at photographs.\u00a0 Someday, you\u2019ll even laugh at the hairstyles, the glasses, and the clothing they used to wear, and at their gawkish, skinny youthfulness, just as you\u2019ve sometimes laughed at the ridiculous way your parents looked when they<\/em> were young.\u00a0 And then you\u2019ll realize, with a shock, that you too\u2014impossible as it once seemed\u2014have grown old, and uncool.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But that\u2019s another topic.\u00a0 My point here is that relationships need refreshing, effort, sheer contact, to survive.\u00a0 Most inevitably won\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Now, the loss of undergraduate relationships won\u2019t prove fatal.\u00a0 Sometimes poignant, perhaps, but not lethal.\u00a0 Ideally, you\u2019ll nurture and retain a few\u2014perhaps even with members of the faculty to whom you\u2019ve felt particularly close.\u00a0 (I hope you\u2019ve had one or more of those; your teachers would appreciate hearing from you.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Other relationships, though, are absolutely vital.\u00a0 They\u2019re at the heart of what it means to be human\u2014and, in some cases, they\u2019re at the center of what it means to be a Latter-day Saint.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here, now, is where my remarks become earnestly serious.\u00a0 This is Brigham Young University, after all:\u00a0 If I can\u2019t appropriately lecture you today on the history of Islamic civilization, I\u2019m going to preach<\/em> to you.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On the issue of relationships, it\u2019s long seemed to me that Buddhism<\/a> and Christianity\u2014certainly the Mormon<\/em> form of Christianity\u2014are polar opposites, at least in their respective theories.\u00a0 (At this point, I ask the indulgence of those who are actual experts on Buddhism.\u00a0 I\u2019m an Islamicist, not a Buddhologist\u2014I don\u2019t even play one on TV\u2014and my summary of Buddhist<\/a> doctrine on this may well be a crude caricature.\u00a0 But I\u2019m really not talking, especially, about Buddhism; I\u2019m using it, and perhaps abusing it, to make a quite unrelated point.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Buddha, appalled by the suffering that he encountered when, as a young prince, he emerged from his sheltered palace life in order to see the world, eventually sought and attained enlightenment.\u00a0 Then he returned to society in order to teach his disciples the path of \u201cnon-attachment.\u201d\u00a0 Attachment to people and things is, in the Buddhist view, the origin of suffering; because of our attachments, we suffer from such things as fear, desire, hatred, greed, and lust.\u00a0 If we achieve non-attachment, our suffering ceases.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Christianity\u2019s doctrine, however, is very different.\u00a0 Please understand that I\u2019m not claiming that Christians are kinder or more charitable than Buddhists.\u00a0 That hasn\u2019t been my experience, and I don\u2019t believe it to be true.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to get at a doctrine, a principle, one that is directly relevant to my remarks this morning.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Master, which is the great commandment in the law?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n This is the first and great commandment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.<\/em>[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA man filled with the love of God,\u201d taught Joseph Smith, \u201cis not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious [anxious!<\/em>] to bless the whole human race.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Christianity urges us not to contract our attachments, but to expand<\/em> them.\u00a0 Not to disentangle ourselves from relationships, but to multiply and deepen them.\u00a0 Not to avoid suffering at all costs, but to endure it well in the cause of serving God and humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The perfect symbol of this is the Son of God himself, who, as the Book of Mormon teaches us, condescended\u2014in Webster\u2019s 1828 dictionary, the word means to voluntarily surrender one\u2019s high status in order to serve, as a king might come down from his throne to dwell among his subjects\u2014he condescended<\/em> to come to earth and suffer on our behalf.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And Mormonism<\/a> adds to that the remarkable doctrine that the God of heaven himself lives, not in cold autocratic isolation, like Aristotle\u2019s \u201cunmoved mover,\u201d but in family.\u00a0 He is our father.\u00a0 And serving others isn\u2019t merely a test to be passed and then left behind, but, even for God, it\u2019s his reason for being, his raison d\u2019etre<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cFor behold, this is my work and my glory\u2014to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 So involved is the God of Mormonism with his children that\u2014to the astonishment of Enoch\u2014he\u2019s pained at their suffering, and weeps<\/em>.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t only the mortal Jesus who weeps at our unhappiness.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Relationships bring us our greatest joys, but, as Buddhism recognizes, they also make us vulnerable to pain and sorrow.\u00a0 A rock feels no pain.\u00a0 An island never cries.\u00a0 But no man is an island, and we don\u2019t aspire to be rocks.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve invited you to maintain at least a relationship or two from your college years, but I\u2019ve warned you that doing so will require an investment of time and effort.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s true of all<\/em> relationships\u2014with your parents, to whom, in most cases, you owe a great debt for your being here today; with your extended family; with a spouse.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMarriage,\u201d said Martin Luther\u2014and I would say \u201cfamily\u201d\u2014 \u201cis a far better school for character than any monastery.\u201d\u00a0 (And Luther knew both monasteries and, eventually, marriage at first hand.)\u00a0 He was convinced that God uses the challenges of daily family life to sanctify us. \u00a0By interacting with others, our rough edges can be made smooth.\u00a0 By being obliged to deal caringly with others who differ from us, who may be needy just when we feel we have little to give, whom we might or might not have chosen as friends, who might sometimes disappoint us, we can become much bigger and better than we would otherwise be.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My wife and I lived in Cairo for four years.\u00a0 We loved it, but it can be draining.\u00a0 Traffic, smog, cultural challenges, the sheer mass of a vast and overcrowded city\u2014sometimes I just wanted quiet.\u00a0 Peace.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Several times, with my friend Kent Brown, I was privileged to visit the ancient monasteries of the Egyptian deserts.\u00a0 And, for the first time, I could actually understand the appeal of monasticism.\u00a0 Serene contemplation is a lot more attractive when the alternative is traffic jams, honking, and automotive exhaust.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t seem to be what the Lord wants.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t put his chosen people in a fertile utopian paradise.\u00a0 He put Israel in Palestine, right between the perpetually warring empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, who constantly ran over them to get at each other, in a place where the Israelites would have to work hard to clear the rocks and reap food to eat.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEs bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,\u201d said Goethe, \u201cSich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cTalent is cultivated in stillness, but character in the currents of life.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In this college, perhaps more than others, you\u2019ve spent a lot of your time in solitude, curled up with very good books.\u00a0 Far be it from me to denigrate such solitary encounters with great thoughts.\u00a0 On the contrary, I hope you\u2019ll devote time to such pursuits for the rest of your lives.\u00a0 Read.\u00a0 Reflect.\u00a0 Think.\u00a0 It\u2019s said that 42% of college graduates will never read another book after graduation.\u00a0 Please don\u2019t be among them.\u00a0 80% of Americans haven\u2019t read a book within the past year.\u00a0 70% of adults haven\u2019t been in a bookstore in the past five<\/em> years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n